In junior high, I had awesome, life-changing teachers. One teacher in particular was my social studies teacher. Under his watchful eye I memorized the beginning of the Constitution, and learned to doodle in my margins to help me pay attention. (It was required. He would check our notes to make sure we had doodles in the margins. I kid you not.) But the thing I remember the most about 7th and 8th grade social studies was current events quizzes. Every Friday we would have a five question quiz about the major events of the week. If you read the paper or watched the national news, you would ace it. Even if you didn’t, you would probably get one or two questions right.

And in the 13 years since junior high, I’ve gotten out of the habit! I don’t watch the news. I’ve received the Sunday paper for the past year in the hopes that I would read it, and I generally don’t. Over the past week, I’ve decided I’m going to spend a few minutes a day reading news. It started at msnbc.com or cnn.com, but then I stumbled on www.thedailybeast.com. They have a “Cheat Sheet” that has links to stories from various news sources, and a one-paragraph summary of each article. So you can quickly learn the basics about a variety of current events, and if you’re interested and have time, you can click on the story and learn more. Genius!

…How many states can split their electoral votes between the candidates? Why is it that some states can and some can’t? Who decides which states split their electoral votes?

…Why does everyone always want to know who everyone else voted for? Isn’t it supposed to be private? “Are you going to vote?” is a very nice question. “Who are you voting for?” makes me uncomfortable! We need to know how many people voted for each candidate, but we don’t need to know who voted for which one! So why did I get asked five times today, “Who are you voting for?” And since I’ll likely be asked five times tomorrow, what is a tactful way of not answering the question?

…Wouldn’t it be cool to see a candidate win a state by one vote??? Wouldn’t it be exciting to be a voter in that state? Your vote could have been the one! (Have you seen Swing Vote? I would really like to see that movie…)

…What is President Bush doing tonight?

…How can they project that a state will be won for a certain candidate when only 5% or 10% of the precincts are reporting?

…As a nation, the issue of race was messed up from the beginning, when the forefathers took land from Native American men and women, and sold African men and women as property. The fact that we are finally a generation who are seeing some healing and some progress in this human issue, is a direct result of human actions from the beginning! Are there any nations in the world that have diverse races of men and women coexisting peacefully, and have been living together peaceably since the beginning of their nation?

…Why is it so emotional? It’s not supposed to be emotional. It’s not supposed to be who wants it more, who fought harder, who had the best strategy. It’s supposed to be, who has the ideas and values that the majority of citizens agree with?

…Senator McCain is making a very gracious concession speech…Why is his audience booing anytime he says anything nice about Senator Obama??? Senator McCain is their leader. If he is talking about moving forward and respecting the opponent, why wouldn’t they?

…Poor Alaska. Their polls don’t close for another hour and a half, if I’m understanding this correctly. Wouldn’t it be great if an election was so close that we had to wait for Alaska and Hawaii’s electoral votes?

…Who had the interesting job of writing a concession speech and an acceptance speech before the day arrived? What did Senator McCain’s potential acceptance speech sound like? What did Senator Obama’s potential concession speech sound like?

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. --Ecclesiastes 1:7